A Cleft of Stars by Geoffrey Jenkins

Author:Geoffrey Jenkins [Jenkins, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thrillers, Action & Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9781440177132
Publisher: iUniverse Star
Published: 2009-09-27T23:00:00+00:00

C H A P T E R N I N E

The word kept coming back with the recurring persistence of a nagging musical phrase which despite all deliberate effort to exclude it intrudes and thrums through one's mind – camisado night attack!

I was teased into wakefulness through the long night which followed and into the small hours of the morning as I lay imprisoned in Rankin's inner cave by the tantalizing question 100

of what manner of night attack I should resort to in my predicament; as the hours passed without a solution there came a growing sense of impotence on my part. Over and over I formulated fresh plans for a break-out. Each one, when I came to evaluate it, would abort on some initially unsuspected snag. Then I would abandon it and start the process again, working round in seemingly endless, unproductive circles. My eyes became completely accustomed to the inky blackness and I could make out various objects in the kitchen cave: the Aladdin-jar water vessels; Nadine's ritual pots next to them; a table and a diamond boiling set, which consisted of a small lipped mug resembling a sauce boat, over a spirit burner standing on a screened asbestos pad. My eyes moved from one object to another; there was simply nothing else to look at. I came to the conclusion that Rankin must use his diamond mill equipment for the secondary purpose of kitchen utensils.

I consulted my illuminated watch dial for the hundredth time as my hundredth plan collapsed – 2.15 a.m. In three hours it would be dawn and still I had concocted no plan of night attack. I became jumpier and more frustrated, both of which hindered clear thinking.

I compelled my mind to go back right to the beginning when Praeger had forced us into the cave, in the hope that by going over every detail some ray of light might emerge. There were two interconnecting caves and I was in the deeper one, the shorter leg of the L-shaped hide-out. The diamond polishing mill occupied the longer section. This in its turn opened via a crooked entrance to the outside enclosure with its commanding view. Nadine was held in the mill section while Talbot and Rankin were in the open, out of sight beyond an invisible line drawn by the glint of moonlight on the pug barrel of a machine-pistol held by our guard. The cave ran dead against solid rock where I was lying and as far as I could discover there were no cracks through which I might possibly have wormed my way to freedom.

I attempted to recall everything I had seen in the mill section when von Praeger had shone his torch on the curious complex. I might have recognized it for what it was if it had looked like the equipment I had seen often enough at my grandfather's, but it didn't. Praeger himself was amused at 101

it and remarked that it was the sort of thing shown in pictures of diamond cutters' workshops a century ago.

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